----- Original Message ----- From: <alert at stratfor.com> To: <redalert at stratfor.com> Sent: Friday, December 31, 1999 10:25 AM Subject: Decade Forecast: Africa
>
> STRATFOR.COM's Global Intelligence Update - December 31, 1999
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> STRATFOR.COM
> Global Intelligence Update
> December 31, 1999
>
> Africa: More of the Same, and Worse
>
> Summary
>
> While it seems too depressingly easy to examine Africa's bleak
> political, economic and social situation and predict more of the
> same, mustering up optimism for a continent with so much stacked
> against it is nearly impossible. Africa is plagued by poverty,
> immature political systems, ethnic and sectarian conflict, and
> international isolation and neglect. The four decades since most of
> Africa gained independence has been dominated by aging regimes or
> alternately, coups and civil wars. Unfortunately, the coming decade
> promises nothing better for most Africans. The only parties likely
> to gain are the foreign multi-national corporations involved in
> natural resource extraction.
>
>
> Analysis
>
> Africa's overarching problem is the fundamental immaturity of its
> political systems. Few African countries have managed to implement
> a system of popularly elected, representative government. On a
> simpler but far more important level, they have failed to develop
> peaceful, reliable systems of political succession. This, like many
> of Africa's problems, is a legacy of European colonization and
> sudden and relatively recent independence. Ancient kingdoms and
> borderless tribal systems were amalgamated almost at random, ruled
> by outsiders for decades, then cast loose and expected to adopt
> European political models and to accept their colonial borders.
>
> What has emerged are two main political patterns: regimes of long
> duration, frequently directed by the leaders of the countries'
> independence movements, protracted civil wars or repeated coups
> d'etat. Frequently, there has been a bit of both. With neither
> representative government nor a peaceful mechanism with which to
> attain it, coups and civil wars have been the source of political
> transition across Africa. Rarely, however, have they represented a
> transition to anything but another authoritarian regime.
>
>
> Aging Regimes and Instability
>
> The recent coup in Cote d'Ivoire is a poignant example of a
> continent-wide problem. Prior to the coup, Cote d'Ivoire was
> considered by many to be a bastion of stability and prosperity in
> turbulent West Africa. Yet that stability was grounded in nearly 40
> years of rigid authoritarian rule by one man, one party and one
> faction. With the current president - only the second since
> independence - blocking any honest democratic transition of power,
> a coup was all but inevitable.
>
> Felix Houphouet-Boigny ruled Cote d'Ivoire as a one-party state
> from independence in 1960 until 1990, when he won yet another five-
> year term in office in the country's first multi-party elections,
> taking some 90 percent of the vote. Upon his death in 1993,
> Houphouet-Boigny was succeeded by his deputy and fellow Democratic
> Party member, Henri Konan Bedie, who was then re-elected in his own
> right in 1995.
>
> Bedie, a Christian of the Baoule ethnic group, followed in his
> predecessor's autocratic footsteps, forcing the Muslim prime
> minister - and leader of the opposition Republican Rally Party -
> Alassane Dramane Ouattara out of office. Recent demonstrations over
> Bedie's decision to ban Ouattara from running in next year's
> presidential elections led to the arrest of several Republican
> Rally Party officials while Ouattara fled the country. The Dec. 24
> coup ended four decades of one-party dominance of Cote d'Ivoire,
> and coup leader Gen. Robert Guei has promised to soon hold
> democratic elections.
>
> However, the future is far from clear, let alone bright. Unseating
> one regime does not make a political transition. The struggle for
> power in Cote d'Ivoire is in fact only beginning, with two
> political models to guide it - authoritarianism and coup d'etat.
> And in a pattern that has already manifested itself elsewhere in
> Africa, the collapse of Cote d'Ivoire's long-standing regime has
> caused sectarian rifts to open in the post-coup power struggle. In
> this case, a contest appears to be shaping up between Muslims and
> Christians.
>
> Cote d'Ivoire is paradigmatic of Africa's problems on several
> counts. First, the country is one of many whose post-colonial
> politics have been dominated by one man or one party. Second, in
> the absence of democratic means to break the ruling faction's hold
> on power, Cote d'Ivoire experienced a coup d'etat. Third, though
> the post-coup power struggle is only in its early stages, it is
> already playing on religious divisions inside the country.
>
> The list of African countries dominated by a single individual,
> party, or clique since independence or for many years is
> overwhelming. Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Jose Eduardo dos Santos
> in Angola have ruled their respective countries since independence,
> as have Sam Nujoma in Namibia and Isaias Afwerki in Eritrea, though
> for a much shorter period. Kenya's Daniel arap Moi is only his
> country's second president, taking the reins of his party and the
> country in 1978 following the death of post-independence leader
> Jomo Kenyatta. From major nations to small ones, the list of
> nations yet to emerge from the influence of the independence legacy
> - now decades old - is long. At least 20 African nations have
> political systems that to a large extent have been shaped by a
> pattern of coups.
>
>
> Indeed, a powerful relationship between the aging nature of these
> regimes and instability and warfare is taking shape. The Democratic
> Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, is a good example. A
> military coup brought long-ruling and kleptocratic Mobutu Sese Seko
> to power in 1965. Mobutu was driven from power in 1997 in an armed
> insurrection led by Laurent Kabila and backed by other countries in
> the region in 1997. Several of the factions that backed Kabila
> turned against him almost immediately after he took power, and he
> has been locked in a civil war ever since.
>
>
> Africa's Web of War
>
> The ongoing civil war in the DRC is the prime example of yet
> another other factor conspiring against African peace and stability
> - the unbroken web of the region's conflicts.
> [ http://www.stratfor.com/services/giu/072799.ASP ] Prior to the still
> very tenuous peace accord, Kabila received active military support
> from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, as well as more tacit support
> from the Republic of Congo, Libya, Chad, Sudan and the Central
> African Republic.
> [ http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/specialreports/special3.htm ] The anti-
> Kabila faction has been backed by Uganda, Rwanda and Angola's UNITA
> rebels; evidence suggests it has received the quiet support of
> South Africa. This multi-national participation involvement in the
> DRC conflict has tied that war tightly to several of Africa's other
> conflicts.
>
> Angola's involvement in the DRC stems from its attempt to control
> UNITA, which supports the anti-Kabila forces and uses the DRC as a
> rear area for its war against Luanda. For the same reason, Angola
> has also been involved in the Republic of Congo. Namibia, which is
> facing a growing problem with UNITA along its border with Angola
> and in the breakaway Caprivi Strip, also contributed forces to the
> war in the DRC. Caprivi separatists reportedly receive aid not only
> from UNITA, but also from Botswana and Zambia.
>
> Not only are the wars in Angola, Namibia and the DRC deeply linked.
> The fact that regional powers, South Africa and Zimbabwe, are on
> different sides in the wars has rendered the South African
> Development Community (SADC) incapable of addressing either
> problem. UNITA has reportedly received South African arms, shipped
> to Mozambique and flown on South African aircraft to Angola by way
> of Zambia.
> [ http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/commentary/m9908010159.htm ].
>
> To the north, Uganda and Sudan have been involved in the DRC
> conflict in efforts to outflank each other; each supports rebel
> armies in the other's country. Sudan's separatist rebels have also
> received support from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt and the United
> States. Meanwhile, Eritrea and Ethiopia are at war, and Eritrea's
> attempt to outflank the deadlocked front lines by supporting
> Ethiopian rebels based in Somalia has spread the conflict to that
> already war-torn country as well.
>
> What emerges is a seamless web of conflict stretching from the Horn
> of Africa to the Caprivi Strip, with filaments reaching out to
> Tripoli, Harare, and beyond. Only the relatively uncontested
> military of Nigeria has served as a bulwark between the central and
> western African conflicts, and Nigeria is now facing its own
> growing internal ethnic conflict. With such widespread connections,
> solving any one conflict becomes extremely difficult, if not
> impossible.
>
>
> The Ethnic and Religious Spillover
>
> Fueling and fueled by the struggle for power in Africa are deep and
> frequently trans-border ethnic and religious divisions. The
> colonial powers drew the map of Africa without concern for
> preexisting divisions, and the international commitment to
> maintenance of these colonial borders has left a number of pressure
> cookers on the continent.
>
> Prominent among these is Nigeria, home to an estimated 250 to 400
> distinct ethnic groups, with the major groups being the Yoruba in
> the southwest, the Ibo in the southeast, and the Hausa-Fulani in
> the north. Ibo military officers led the country after a coup in
> 1966, though other ethnic groups responded by massacring Ibos
> living in the north. Eastern groups tried to form the secessionist
> state of Biafra in 1967, a move that sparked a three-year civil
> war.
>
> The Hausa have dominated recent military governments, though new
> President Olusegun Obasanjo is a Yoruba. Since Obasanjo was backed
> by a faction of Hausa military officers, he is not trusted by the
> predominantly Christian Yoruba, yet since he is a Yoruba, he is not
> trusted by the predominantly Muslim Hausas. The ensuing tension has
> already resulted in riots, and some of the northern Hausa states
> have begun implementing Islamic Sharia law, posing a challenge to
> central government in the country.
> [ http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/specialreports/special28.htm ]
>
> The legacy of ethnic political machinations on the part of European
> colonial powers in Rwanda and Burundi has in the 1990s finally
> expressed itself in genocidal war between the countries' Hutu and
> Tutsi ethnic groups. Sudan's civil war is being waged between the
> Muslim government and the predominantly Christian opposition in the
> south. Additionally, Muslim fundamentalists continue to challenge
> the governments of Egypt, Libya and Algeria.
>
> Ethnic and religious competition is a constant source of
> instability throughout Africa, but during political transitions,
> this contest can quickly grow in importance and hostility. The
> civil war that toppled Somalia's Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 left a
> power vacuum that ignited feuds between the country's multiple
> clans. Since then the country has degenerated into a number of ill
> defined and perpetually feuding warlord dominated fiefdoms. Two of
> these, Somaliland and Puntland, have consolidated some semblance of
> borders and governments and may provide a model not only for the
> rest of Somalia but for other ethnically divided countries in
> Africa as well.
>
> The international community long held a policy of inviolability of
> borders in post-colonial Africa, but that is changing. Partly, this
> is due to waning interest on the part of the developed world for
> Africa and its politics. Partly, it is a conscious policy decision.
> No one blinked at Eritrea's secession from Ethiopia. Italy has
> appeared to promote segmentation as a solution to the Somali
> conflict [ http://www.stratfor.com/services/giu/121098.asp ], and the
> United States even appears to be backing secession for southern
> Sudan [ http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/commentary/m9912032330.htm ].
>
>
> Not Worth the Effort: International Neglect of Africa
>
> Facilitating the unchecked strife in Africa has been the developed
> world's abandonment of the continent.
>
> While France, for one, continues to dabble in its former colonies,
> the other colonial powers and, significantly, the United States,
> have effectively washed their hands of the continent. The United
> States was burned in Somalia when the Somalis refused to play by
> Washington's rules. Though it continues to moralize, Washington has
> not found a good reason to return to the continent. The risks
> simply outweigh the rewards. Economically, there are richer
> pickings elsewhere, and with the end of the Cold War, Africa has
> lost most of its strategic significance. The geopolitical game
> against a resurgent Russia and increasingly assertive China is
> being played out in Central Asia and the Caucasus, not in Angola.
>
> What has emerged is a situation in which international bodies such
> as the United Nations, which could conceivably intervene in Africa,
> have the most powerful member, the United States, deeply
> disinterested in doing so. Add to this the fact that the UN's
> European members are more concerned with economically and
> politically critical regions such as Eastern Europe, the Balkans,
> the former Soviet Union and Asia. The result is that Africa gets
> ignored.
>
> Would-be regional power brokers such as South Africa, Libya and
> Nigeria are involved in a number of Africa's conflicts, but their
> own long-term stability is very much in question. Libya's Moammar
> Gadhafi, who rose to power in a coup in 1969, has no heir apparent.
> Nigeria's ethnic and religious rifts are deepening, despite and in
> part because of the democratic election of Obasanjo. And the short
> tenure of the African National Congress (ANC) at the helm of South
> Africa's government has seen a dramatic surge in crime and a
> deterioration of the country's infrastructure. After decades of
> apartheid, black South Africans are not soon about to tolerate the
> election of a white government, while the whites are not going to
> tolerate much more deterioration under the ANC. Neither is eager to
> give the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party a chance. Unless the ANC can
> revitalize South Africa's economy and enforce domestic peace and
> stability, a day of reckoning is approaching.
>
>
> Africa's Future: Somebody's Interested
>
> There is, however, one set of external actors that may have a
> substantial impact on the future of Africa - multi-national
> corporations. Those companies involved in extracting Africa's rich
> natural resources have a vested interest in maintaining stability
> around their concessions.
>
> Examples abound of their cooperation with various competing
> factions. Shell Oil has a documented and widely criticized history
> of backing the military regimes in Nigeria. Jean-Raymond Boulle,
> chief shareholder of the mining firm American Mineral Fields, Inc.,
> reportedly received a mining concession after he provided a company
> jet to then rebel leader Laurent Kabila during his battle to
> overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire. And DeBeers recently
> publicized its official decision to cease purchasing diamonds from
> UNITA, purchases the rebels had used to finance their war in
> Angola. The pattern holds true in areas of instability outside
> Africa as well, for example in Colombia, where British Petroleum
> has been implicated in a scandal over funding a Colombian Army unit
> that was charged with human rights violations.
>
> Other companies throughout Africa hire what amount to private
> armies of security forces, and unrevealed instances of direct
> cooperation with warring parties are undoubtedly far more numerous
> than the documented examples. As struggles over political
> succession proliferate, corporations face the choice of sitting
> passively by as war consumes investment - or quietly backing one of
> the factions. The natural symbiosis between warring factions eager
> for financial support and corporations eager to protect their
> investments will inevitably lead to cooperation between the two -
> particularly in the context of broad neglect of the region on the
> part of the corporations' European and American home governments.
>
> The future of Africa appears to be more of the same, and worse.
> International disinterest has left the continent to solve its own
> problems. Lacking the mechanisms to solve those problems by
> peaceful means, the continent is destined for further violent
> political transitions. This competition for power inevitably plays
> off of pre-existing ethnic and religious rifts in African
> countries, and as there is no longer an international commitment to
> the integrity of Africa's borders, the net result will be a
> widespread redrawing of those borders.
>
> Finally, as foreign companies struggle to protect their assets in
> Africa, the relationships they will build with the warring factions
> will, when the new borders and regimes ossify, ironically lead to a
> kind of corporate re-colonization of Africa. Africa will evolve
> into smaller, more ethnically and religiously homogenous countries,
> many of which will be symbiotically tied to one or more foreign
> corporations. The best that can be expected is that the violence
> and disorder that will continue to dominate Africa over the next
> decade will rationalize some of the continent's colonial borders
> and bring new players to the political stage.
>
>
>
>
> (c) 1999, Stratfor, Inc.
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